Beyond the Black Stump is a novel by British author Nevil Shute. It was first published in the UK by William Heinemann Ltd in 1956.
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Sean Leahy (born 1958) is an Australian cartoonist working for the Courier Mail in Brisbane, Australia. He draws political cartoons for the paper, and also his own comic strip, Beyond the Black Stump, which is distributed in Australia.
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Woop Woop is an Australian and New Zealand term meaning far away from anything "he lives out woop woop". Equivalent terms include "beyond the black stump" and "dingo woop woop" (also Australia), "the boondocks" (Southern United States) and "out in the sticks" or "the back of beyond" (UK).
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Blackall is approximately by road from the state capital, Brisbane. The town is situated on the Barcoo River and Landsborough Highway (Matilda Highway). Blackall claims to be the home of the original Black Stump, which marks the original Astro Station established in 1887. Places west of this point are said to be 'beyond the black stump'.
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It was considered at the time that country to the west of Blackall was beyond the 'black stump'.Blackall Shire Council retrieved 24 November 2006. A stump of petrified wood which marks the location of the original Astro Station is found at the monument in Thistle Street () near Blackall State School. This petrified stump replaces the original blackened timber stump destroyed by fire.
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'Beyond the Black Stump' is a syndicated cartoon strip, featuring Australian native animals as characters. It is published in papers across Australia including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, Queensland. See their web site for more information (including some strips and characters). The Black Stump Music and Arts Festival was a four-day Christian festival that is held in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan region over the Labour Day long weekend, often the first weekend in October, from 1985 to 2014.
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In the 1950s and 1960s Biro illustrated many book covers for famous authors such as Nigel Tranter and Nevil Shute (Requiem for a Wren, Round the Bend, The Far Country and Beyond the Black Stump). For C.S. Forester, publishing with Michael Joseph, Biro made cover illustrations of several first editions: Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, Hornblower and the Atropos, Hornblower in the West Indies and Randall and the River of Time. In 1965 for Hamish Hamilton he illustrated the first edition of Angler's Moon by Leo Walmsley. He also illustrated covers for Radio Times.
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According to the co-ordinates for the oil exploration given in the final pages of the novel—23 degrees 5 minutes South, 118 degrees 51 minutes EastNevil Shute, Beyond the Black Stump, Vintage, London, p. 237.—most of the story is set in the Ophthalmia Range in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, roughly halfway between where the towns of Paraburdoo and Newman are today. The Eastern Oregon town that Shute calls "Hazel" seems to be the town of Joseph, or possibly La Grande at the foot of the Wallowa mountains, which contains the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area.
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About 5 km from the village, on the Rathdrum road, the Clara Lara fun park covers an area of some 40 ha. Birdwatchers come here to look for the great spotted woodpecker, Ireland's newest species, which breeds in the area. Laragh is also sometimes (including on Sunday mornings and lunchtime) used as a meeting and stop-off point for motorcyclists and cyclists following a run over "The Gap" (the R756) before they head on to Rathdrum. "Laragh" is the name of a fictional sheep station in Western Australia run by the Regan family in Nevil Shute's novel Beyond the Black Stump.
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Gunbar cemetery is the burial-place of Mrs. Barbara Blain, the woman whose accidental death in March 1886 possibly gave rise to the Australian expression ‘black stump’, the name for a sort of nebulous location beyond which the country is considered remote (as in "beyond the black stump" or "this side of the black stump"). Mrs. Blain's husband was a carrier or teamster, based at Hay. Carriers were an integral part of the Riverina economy during the 19th century; they transported wool and supplies by drays drawn by horse- or bullock-teams, travelling across the landscape servicing stations and settlements distant from the main transport hubs of the region.
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1, Weldon Russell Publishing, Willoughby, 1989, It is colloquially said that 'the outback' is located "beyond the Black Stump". The location of the black stump may be some hypothetical location or may vary depending on local custom and folklore. It has been suggested that the term comes from the Black Stump Wine Saloon that once stood about out of Coolah, New South Wales on the Gunnedah Road. It is claimed that the saloon, named after the nearby Black Stump Run and Black Stump Creek, was an important staging post for traffic to north-west New South Wales and it became a marker by which people gauged their journeys.
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Veld can be loosely compared to the Australian terms outback or "the bush", to the prairie of North America, to the pampas lowlands of South America, or to the steppe of Central Asia. Someone from Yorkshire might equate "wandering across the moors" to "walking through the veld." By extension, the veld can be compared to the "boondocks" or those places "beyond the black stump" in Australia. There is a sense in which it refers in essence to unimproved land (and is therefore not the equivalent of the English paddock) and does not include areas used both for pastoral activities and the planting of crops.
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His books are in three main clusters, early pre-war flying adventures; second world war; and Australia. Another recurrent theme is the bridging of social barriers such as class (Lonely Road and Landfall), race (The Chequer Board), or religion (Round the Bend). The Australian novels are individual hymns to that country, with subtle disparagement of the mores of the United States (Beyond the Black Stump) and overt antipathy towards the post-World War II socialist government of Shute's native Britain (The Far Country and In the Wet). Shute's heroes tended to be like himself: middle- class solicitors, doctors, accountants, bank managers, engineers, generally university graduates.
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The story concerns a young American geologist, Stanton Laird, working in the Australian outback in the field of oil exploration. Although he is in a very remote location - beyond the black stump - in a region called "the Lunatic" in Western Australia, he is part of a crew that has a well-appointed mobile facility. He is befriended by a local farming family, the Regans, and develops a relationship with their daughter Mollie. The Regans run an enormously profitable station, but their domestic lifestyle is, to say the least, unconventional, with the two Regan brothers at one time having Mollie's mother move from one to the other without bothering to get a divorce.
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